To Hell and Back
by psquare
Summary: Oneshot. Possessions and nightmares, graveyards and visions, and Dean realises there's no length to which Sam wouldn't go to save him.


_**A/N**_: A few things from me before you proceed.

Firstly, this is my first _Supernatural_ fic. I needed to tell that, because I've become a _Supernatural_ addict over the past few months, and – obviously – I went through some of the popular SN fics on this site, and I realised I was seriously out of my depth. I couldn't possibly hope to write all as well as _that_, but I've finally plucked enough courage and time to _try_, and this is my final product. I'm still a little nervous about the characterisation and the grammar – unwieldy sentences and disjointed thoughts galore in here – so any constructive criticism would be much appreciated.

Secondly, a little warning: Major Spoilers until the end of Season 2, and mild ones for what has been shown of Season 3. I would say that this is set sometime between Episodes 10 and 11 of Season 3. A fair bit of swearing and gore thrown in, too.

Thirdly, I don't own _Supernatural_, or any of its characters. I wouldn't mind having just Sam though, but who's listening?

On with the story, then…

_**To Hell and Back**_

_Dean Michael Winchester._

There was a sprinkling of dust, a tiny shower of powdered stone as the words etched themselves onto the stone. It was fascinating, rhythmic, and strangely hypnotic.

_1979 – 2008_

Twenty-nine years. A long time, he thought idly. 

_Beloved son and brother._

Yeah, as if _that_ wasn't abrupt.

* * *

Dean Winchester roused himself from the depths of alcohol-induced slumber. Somebody in the dark room was gasping, struggling for breath, moaning and shifting around a hell of a lot too much.

"Sammy?"

He glanced to his side, and soon confirmed that his oversized little brother was the cause of all of the disturbance. Sam seemed to be caught in the fading throes of a nightmare, for his restless movements were starting to cease, and he wasn't sounding like a drowning man anymore. Soon he had settled into normal sleep again.

Well, as normal as it could get, anyway.

This happened just about every night these days, and Dean had grown accustomed. Sometimes he could tell himself he was ignoring Sam. Sometimes he would think about how all this would stop, soon. Sometimes he just ditched thinking, and went back to sleep.

That last option sounded just about perfect then.

* * *

It was raining.

Of _course_ it would rain. What was a proper melodramatic-scene-in-a-graveyard without _rain_?

Apparently, it would be a melodramatic-scene-in-a-graveyard without grim men in black suits standing around with misty eyes. And since Sam was such a freakin' _perfectionist_, he filled in the part… perfectly.

But still, he looked… different.

The raindrops –falling faster and faster – were splattering his spruce, neatly pressed suit but Sam didn't seem to mind. An ugly-looking scar – the stitches still looked fresh – marred one side of his face, running from cheek to collarbone. He was staring at the gravestone with eyes that glittered with tears – and also a manic intensity that Dean had come to recognise all too well.

It was the look with which Sam said, _I know what I want, and I'm going to __**get**__ it. _

_-------------------------------------_

"Hey bro?"

What was with all the sudden _light_? He just wanted to go back to _sleep_, dammit. "Leave me alone," he tried to say, but it came out sounding more like "lemelone."

"Trying out some new archaic tongue out on me, bro?"

_Dude, did you even listen to what you just said_, Dean thought, exasperated. Sam was trying his hardest to joke, but it came out sounding hurried, forced, with a clear undercurrent of panic that he was doing his very best to hide. Like he was trying his best to hold himself together.

And since when did Sam constantly refer to him as _bro_?

"Hey, hey Dean? _Answer_ me, man."

_I'm trying, Sammy, I am_. But the words wouldn't come. A tiredness had seeped into every pore of his being, and he felt like he was sinking into the bed, like it was quicksand. He just wanted to…

"Dean? Wake _up_. _Please_."

Shit, now Sammy sounded _really_ panicked, no pretence there. It's okay, he wanted to say, he's fine, but all he could do was give in to the blackness, because, by _God_, he was tired, and the last thing he saw – or didn't see, it's not like he'd opened his eyes – was a pair of yellow glittering orbs in the darkness before it claimed him for its own.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Sam was saying, voice so low Dean could barely hear him. "I couldn't save you."

Dean wanted to roll his eyes. _Well, duh, Captain Melodramatically Obvious_.

"I couldn't save _you_," Sam repeated, eyes hooded. "Not _you_, not really. This is the least I could do, Dean. I'm sorry."

This was so typically _Sam_, that Dean immediately felt reassured. _Of course. When under stress, start talking. And don't stop._ How many bedside vigils had Sam kept when his brother was injured, where he would talk non-stop, tripping from one subject to another, like his brain had just as freakishly long legs as he had? It didn't matter _what_ it was about – research, childhood memories, Dad, Dean's latest fling, how pissed _off_ he was, his nightmares, Stanford, and most recently (_and most disturbingly_) the Deal, and Dean's impending death (snarky comments like _Dude, I was __**born**__ just a letter away from the __**Deal**__, you know?_ didn't help at that point, either).

"Ah, dear, well-behaved, well-educated Samuel. Apologising as usual."

Dean wanted to tense, Dean wanted to lock his lips in a snarl and turn around, because that voice had just sounded _wrong_, all smooth and oily and malicious, and utterly _demonic_.

It also sounded familiar.

Sam didn't immediately turn to face the source of that voice – Dean could see him, a shadow in the rain, standing a few metres behind his brother – but sighed and reached inside his pocket. "Well, I've got a lot to be sorry for."

The shadow gave a short, barking laugh, and stepped forward. Dean wondered if this would be as good a time as any to have his breath catch in his throat. 

It was him. _Him_. Dean Winchester. In the flesh, with a wicked grin, and a blood-smeared face to boot.

_Crap_.

Sam finally turned around, and he had the Colt gripped in his hand. The gun looked… different, though. It was chaffed and battered, and there were some strange engravings on the –

"Well, time to finish it now, Sammy." Dean had just enough time to catch his clone's eyes turn pitch black before he was nothing more than an inhumanly fast blur, hurtling straight toward Sam.

* * *

"I don't really know what's wrong, Bobby, we –"

_Good lad_, Dean thought vaguely. _You called Bobby_.

" – yeah, I checked that out as well, but I think –"

_Sammy, stop talking and look here, dammit_.

" – it's been more than a _day_, Bobby, and he's not woken up yet –"

Dean wondered if that should be bothering him. _I'm __**awake,**__ Sam, get me __**out**__ – _

" – yeah, but he's going to die anyway, isn't he."

* * *

_Jesus_, Dean thought, wanting to blink in astonishment. _Where did Sam learn to move like that?_

It seemed to have happened in no time at all – his brother had deftly shifted his lanky twenty-four year old frame out of the way, bringing up an elbow that smashed into the side of his clone's skull as he carried forward with his momentum. He pitched forward, dazed, and Sam was on top of him immediately, the Colt pointed at his skull.

The whole thing had happened so inhumanly _fast_ – like time was on fast forward, except the rhythm of the raindrops against the ground and the stone had been steady throughout, and what the _fuck_, how could Sam move so _fast_ –

"You're finished," Sam growled through his teeth, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

_It hurts. Good Lord, it __**hurts**_

The pain was intense – white-hot, even behind closed eyelids. Little electrical jolts ran up his spine, and he knew he was gasping, arching his body, each and every muscle taut and screaming in pain; somebody was holding down his limbs (_Wow Sam has __**some**__ grip with those freakishly long fingers of his_) but he still wasn't able to open his eyes, or release the weight in his throat that had currently killed his voice and locked his screams inside. He could hear Sam relentlessly chanting something in Latin – or was it Latin? Dean was a little too distracted to make out exactly – and was Sam performing a _spell_, an _exorcism_, it hurt so _bad_ – 

And suddenly, _suddenly,_ there was silence.

Long, yawning silence, like a void, and the pain had disappeared.

_Feels like somebody just turned off a full-blast stereo in my eardrum_, Dean thought dazedly.

The heaviness, unfortunately, hadn't gone with the pain. If anything, it felt even _more_ overwhelming.

"So… it's not… it's not out yet?"

Sam. He sounded… hoarse. Exhausted. Like he hadn't slept for a long time. Dean wondered just how long it had been since he'd opened his eyes.

There was a long pause, before Sam started talking again. "I… see. I guess we could… could try that." There was a sigh and creak of bedsprings as Sam sat on the edge of his bed. There was another pause, and Sam suddenly snapped, "_No_! I'm _not_ going to let that happen!"

And Dean suddenly thought: _Ah hell, I can't hear Bobby._

In fact, he couldn't hear _anything_ – just Sam, the noisy breathing, his constant, restless movements, his pacing, his despairing sighs, and his vehement refusal to give _up_ – it was like his universe was suddenly just _Sam_, and it was so crazy Dean wanted to laugh, and yet Dean wanted to despair, because Sam was all around him, and he couldn't even get up, look his brother in the eye, and say everything was fine, because there was no freakin' _way_ that Dean was going to leave Sam; because as long as he was there, nothing bad was going to happen to him.

* * *

… And his head split open, and his blood spattered on the wet ground, a dark, rippling stain.

Sam got up, brushing off the splattered blood and raindrops that had mingled on his cheeks. He still held the Colt warily, and there was so much hate and anger in his eyes that Dean was taken aback. What… what had –

"Was that really going to stop me, now, Sam?"

Dean wanted to shout, to scream, to reel a few steps back and open his eyes as wide as possible, because there was absolutely no _way_ that his clone could have just healed himself, and now stand up and leer at Sam through a curtain of blood and rain. His brother, for his part, didn't seem surprised. It was almost like he had been expecting it.

"No," he said.

"Then _why_, Sam?" Dean's clone said, stepping forward. "Why fight? Just… let it end already. Let us finish this farce."

Sam looked away for a moment, as if he was distracted. "No," he murmured, "not just yet."

He looked back at Dean, and smiled. A sad smile. Melancholy, resigned. This was again so definitely _Sam_, and Dean was torn between what Sam had _become_ and what Sam had _been_ –

"Not without a fight."

* * *

_This can't go on_.

Dean wasn't sure of what exactly was happening, if he was alternating between two worlds – like his consciousness was leaking across the boundaries of _reality_ and _illusion_ – but he knew Sam needed him to get out of it, and that was all that mattered.

_Okay, let's review_, Dean thought, trying to retreat to a quiet corner of his mind. The terrible vision called at him again, baying for his sanity. But the residual pain – a jittering ache that resounded in his very bones – from Sam's attempted exorcism kept him grounded, tied him to reality with a slender thread.

_Last I remember, we were just hunting._ It had been a relatively simple case, too – though he had on several occasions learnt of the dangers of calling something supernatural as _simple _– a vengeful spirit in another small middle American town, a thwarted wife who had had a cheating husband. A few cursory investigations, and they knew where the grave was. After that, it had been just the Salt and Burn routine. 

… Yeah. Routine? Apparently another dangerous word to associate with the supernatural.

Sam had been fussing about something the night they dug up the wife's grave – Dean didn't really listen, he was just glad that Sam was fussing at _all_, that Sam had not changed entirely, not _yet_ – and he remembered vaguely that it had been a symbol on the grave that Sam found unusual. Dean hadn't recognised it, and he really didn't want to bother, for he had suddenly felt bone _tired_, and all he wanted to do was curl up with a hard drink and a hot waitress. He had expressed himself as such, and to his surprise, Sam didn't push it.

Maybe he'd been tired, too.

They had completed the Salt and Burn without much further ado, after which Sam retired to the motel, and Dean, though unable to find a waitress of hotness to fit even within his flexible definition, did manage to get a couple of hard drinks before he returned to the motel to find his brother already fast asleep. It had been a rather short road to dreamland after _that_, and – 

Good Lord, he was starting to sound like a freakin' _journal_.

Not a great way to spend a few minutes of hard-won sanity.

But there had to be _something_ in there that could explain the situation he was in, maybe, _maybe_ that freakish _symbol_ Sam was fussing about (_aw, dammit Sam, why didn't you fuss more_), and even though he couldn't remember _anything_ about that symbol, Sam _must_ have remembered, because Sam was just like that – freakish geek College Boy and all – and Sam _must_ be doing something about that right _now_, but when was _now_ and when was _then_, he didn't know, it was like he had been in the darkness _forever_ – 

The voice of his mind reached a crescendo as his physical pain faded away, and two cold, glittering, yellow orbs gleamed from within the black.

_Not – not __**him**__ again…_

The thread snapped.

* * *

"Story of your life, I guess," his clone said, with that disarmingly innocent grin, before his eyes turned pitch black and he just wasn't _Dean_ anymore. "Everything's gotta be a freakin' dramatic comic-book _battle_ with you guys."

The voice was his, that cocky inflection was his, the grin was his, the body was his, but that thing was not him, not him, _not him_ – 

Sam didn't answer – he had that vague look on his face again, like he was distracted; like he was waiting for something. 

Without warning, Dean's clone was upon Sam, and the fight ensued. The Colt clattered to the ground, pushed further away by Sam's foot, as he strained from keeping the clone's fists from smashing his face in. 

The gun finally clattered to a rest against Dean's headstone.

The fight continued with a ferocity that made Dean want to catch his breath in his throat. Sam was fighting with an efficiency and power that easily outclassed his previously considerable form, but Dean's clone was slowly but surely gaining the upper hand. Sam was tiring, he was being pushed back, toward the grave, his long legs impacting against the headstone –

"How appropriate," the clone growled. "Both of you will now share the same grave too."

Despite the horror of what he was witnessing, Dean couldn't help but think, _oh great, even the demon that __**I**__ become is all typical Evil Villain?_ before Sam, amazingly, blood running from his lips and nose and ears, bruises covering every other part of his face, smiled. 

"Yeah," he said. "How appropriate."

And with that a strange light entered his eyes, a ferocity unmistakable even behind swollen eyelids, and Dean had a strangely sickening feeling that his brother had been saving something up for the last. He grabbed the clone's shoulders with a strength that seemed to have been born out of nowhere, and swirled him around and slammed him against the gravestone. The clone had barely begun to register surprise, before Sam began to chant, and the clone's eyes closed, and his features began to tauten in unbearable pain. 

_What –?_

A perfectly symmetrical circle with the gravestone at the centre began to glow. No, not the gravestone – the _Colt_. Glowing symbols began to trace themselves in the circle, and Sam continued chanting, and even as the clone began screaming, bucking underneath Sam's vice-like grip, his voice droned on, clear and strong. 

The symbols looked vaguely familiar – were they similar to the one they had found on the woman's grave? Was this a real _vision_, like those freaky ones that Sam used to get, not just a _nightmare_? Icy fear clutched at his heart, an irrational panic that made him want to start breathing heavily.

But he _couldn't_. He was just an _observer_, wasn't he – witnessing the inevitable, the story of his non-future spelt out before him in real-time, high definition colour. But it _wasn't_ inevitable, that was the whole point, it _couldn't_ be, he… he and _Sam_ wouldn't _let_ it…

Sam had stopped chanting. A strange sort of silence followed, punctuated by wet gurgles from the clone as copious amounts of blood seeped out his ­– _its_ – mouth, and the soft sound of the rain. A wild sort of grin twisted Sam's lips, eerily shadowed by the continued glow from whatever symbols had drawn themselves around the gravestone. "This grave's empty, you know," he said, voice suddenly raspy, finally feeling the pain from all the injuries he had sustained, "I kept everything ready for this moment. All this crap about the demon army – _ends now_."

The clone managed to produce a gurgling laugh. It grinned, displaying darkly red-stained teeth. "Ignorant _boy_," it spat, "you… do not… understand the… magnitude… of the mistake… you are committing."

Sam raised a cold eyebrow. "Mistake?"

"What you are… planning… will not work," it said. The clone seemed to be having more and more trouble in trying to speak, but it went on anyway. "And you… seriously believe… you can… vanquish the army… like _this_?" Another hacking, wet laugh. "We… are… the _world_, Samuel Winchester… as long as… the world exists… _we_ exist."

Sam did not respond immediately, but his nostrils flared, and the strong line of his jaw tightened. "Not anymore," he growled, and picked up the glowing Colt. He released his grip on the clone, which slumped bonelessly against the headstone, and aimed carefully at its forehead. Dean could see Sam's shoulders trembling, tears were beginning to run down his damaged face, mixing with the blood and the rain, but the hand that held the gun was amazingly strong and sure.

"For Mom and Dad and Jessica," he whispered. "For Bobby, and… for Dean."

He pulled the trigger, and the clone's head exploded one last time, while the soft blue glow from the symbols and the gun intensified and expanded, masking the gore, finally moving to envelope Sam and the gravestone and the rain and blood-drenched horror as pain blossomed across Dean's consciousness once more, and a strange distant force was dragging him out of the darkness, and the vision was lost to him once again.

* * *

Dean found that he was able to open his eyes.

Just a tiny sliver – a thin line of light slicing through the darkness behind his eyelids, but for now, that was _hope_, that was _yes, baby, I'm coming __**back**_and he was going to grab at it. 

He forced open his eyelids a couple of millimetres more, and found, as a bonus, he had regained the use of his lips as well. "Sam," he mumbled. "Sa – Sam?"

His brother's face immediately loomed over his own – not battered and bloody and crazy – but concerned, relieved and exhausted, shining with sweat even as his eyes filled with joyous relief. "Dean," he said, his voice strangely muffled and sluggish to Dean's ears – apparently the hearing part hadn't been quick enough to recover completely. "You're going to be okay. It's… it's nearly gone."

_What's nearly gone?_ Dean wanted to ask desperately, but could only manage a feeble, "Wha?"

"Just hang in there, son," floated in Bobby's voice from some distant corner of the universe. 

_That was touching, Bobby, but hardly __**useful**_ Dean thought, with frustration that was made all the more agonising for the fact that he had no fulfilling way to express it. He didn't want to go back to that horrifying vision-dream, _dammit_, all he wanted was a rock-solid reason why he was in the situation, a reasonably quick _solution_ to said situation, because each hour, each minute that he spent in this useless semi-comatose state was eating away at the time he had left to live, and he didn't want to _die_, dammit!

"Get," he mumbled, through lips that felt like someone had stuffed them with lead pellets, "get muh… me… out."

"Soon, Dean, soon," Sam said, the smallest note of strain in his voice betraying his anxiety. His face disappeared, to reveal the rickety, dusty ceiling of a room in… Bobby's house? _But of course_, he thought to himself, _if I've been asleep as long as I think I've been, obviously we couldn't stay on at the motel_.

"Just… just one last thing…" Sam's voice drifted to him once again, but it was growing more and more faint. "You've just got to stay with me, man… it'll work then…"

_What?_ But he was already fading away, and though from what he couldn't understand, he knew where _to_, and that was the last place he wanted to go back to. He fought to stay awake, to keep his eyelids open, as the heaviness began to increase. "Sam," he tried to say again, but his lips had lost their function, and invisible weights seemed determined to keep pulling at his eyelids.

_No. I don't want to –_

" – dammit, Dean, you've got to stay _awake_ – "

– _go back there, and see – _

" – get it _out_, if you don't – "

– _you like that, Sam. You need _– 

" – no, no, _where_ – "

– _me here, and I am _–

" – just… no, it will – "

– _**not**__ going to leave_.

* * *

The light didn't fade away.

Sam was still at the epicentre of the glowing whirlwind, which had lost its blue sheen and now was a bright gold that Dean supposed should have made his eyes hurt. The glow widened, until it seemed like a small sun was locked away within that grave. The shape out of which the light emerged was a perfectly symmetrical rectangle, and Dean didn't take long to recognise it as – 

– _a doorway_.

That icy panic wrapped its tendrils around his heart once again, as he tried to grasp at what that meant, the memories of that fateful night in Cold Oak flooding back. The _Colt_, and a _gate_, that meant – 

_Oh no no __**no**__, Sam, don't tell me you're doing what I __**think**__ you're doing – _

The clone was sinking into the doorway of light, as if the ground beneath him was nothing more than water, while Sam remained hunched, on his knees on the ground. _This isn't the same as last time, though_, Dean thought. _There's something different, there's nothing coming __**out**__…_

Suddenly a high-pitched sound rent the air, and grew in intensity, before it sounded like a million human voices raised in unison, screaming unspeakable agony; raw, animal cries born out of unseen torture, unexplainable suffering. Dean wanted to cringe and clamp his hands over his ears, while Sam shuddered and collapsed forward, his elbows on the ground, breathing heavily, trembling like he was going to fly apart.

The night sky seemed impossibly _darker_, all of a sudden, and the tell-tale black fog of demonic presence began to gather above the grave, swirling and roiling, growing bigger and bigger by the second. The cries of agony grew louder, and in some distant, detached part of his brain that wasn't throbbing from hearing them, Dean realised: _they're going back. Sam's called them all back to hell._

_Sam's called them._

_Sam._

_That means…_

In an impossible instant, the demon fog began to descend into the doorway, like it was being pulled in by vacuum. Tendrils of the fast-descending fog seemed to grab at Sam like eerie hands as they passed him, tearing fresh wounds into his flesh in their wake. Sam continued to remain in his hunched position, and was visibly shaking now, his breathing hitched and wet.

Suddenly he arched back, eyes wide open, as if he had received a jolt of intense pain, and his mouth opened in a silent scream, and all Dean could think was _no, no, not this, I don't want to see this –_

A black cloud rose from within his open mouth, and though it was a spectacle Dean had seen many times – and it was not the first time he had seen it with Sam, either – he couldn't help wanting to turn his face away and cringe. Unlike the other times, though, Sam's very body seemed to dissolve and fade as the demonic presence was sucked out of him, and again the distant corner threw up the explanation: The demon and Sam were _one_. He had become their leader, and he had led them all straight back to hell.

Sam had met his destiny, and he had defied it.

For the ones he had loved.

For Dean.

As abruptly as it had begun, it stopped. The doorway of light closed, and the night sky returned to normal. The rain continued to pour steadily, and there was nothing left of Sam but his wet and bloodstained clothes, pooled at the foot of Dean's headstone. 

_End of the Winchester saga_, Dean thought vaguely, before something seemed to hit his mind with an almost physical impact, and all he wanted to do was _scream_. Was what he had seen the future? Was that what Sam was going to become? Was that what _he_ was going to become? _This can't happen, I won't __**let**__ it happen, I need to –_

The world around him suddenly started to constrict, and if this world was his mind, then that was just about right, because Dean felt like he was choking on something, an icy ball of panic that refused to budge. Something seemed to be pulling at the edge of his consciousness with ever-increasing force, and he felt a slow, festering pain start to grow in his physical body. And through it all, he heard Sam's voice echoing through the universe of his mind, before it turned completely black: "_It's done, now_."

_It's done, it's done, and I –_

Dean opened his eyes.

* * *

The shadows that the streaming sunlight threw over the dusty walls of the room were strangely fascinating – Dean Winchester sat up in bed, studying them, allowing his mind to wander. It had been a day since he had woken up from whatever ordeal he had been through, and though neither Sam nor Bobby had been very forthcoming with explanations, Dean hadn't had the strength to ask too many questions, either. He had mostly spent the twenty-four hours eating, occasionally stretching his legs, and getting some _real_ sleep.

All the while the freaky vision-thing that he had seen haunted him, gnawing at the back of his brain like an insect.

The door to his room opened and Sam entered, still looking exhausted and sleep-deprived, but with an easy smile on his lips. "Hey Dean," he said. "You finished your lunch yet?"

"You mean Cardboard Sandwich and Piss Soup?" Dean raised his eyebrows at the half-eaten lunch on his bedside table. "Yum."

Sam chuckled. "Okay, so the diner isn't great, but it's the closest source of food we've got until Bobby comes back from his errand."

"You could try cooking, you know," Dean mumbled.

Sam shot him a wry glance. "Dean, the whole point of this rest is _recovery_. That's not going to happen if you eat my cooking."

Dean closed his eyes. "I'm hearing the attempt at _funny_, Sam, but you've got a long way to go."

Sam snorted, but didn't say anything. Dean heard the scrape of the chair by the bedside on the wooden floor as Sam sat down. A silence stretched between them, and it irritated Dean like an itch he couldn't reach.

"Well?" Dean said finally, opening his eyes and looking to his side.

"Well what?" Sam asked blankly.

"I'm _waiting_, Sam," Dean said, raising his eyebrows. "Unless, of course, you want me to throttle it out of you."

Sam didn't smile. He gave a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to shake its way through his lanky frame and looked away. "You were out of it for eight days," he said.

The eyebrows rose further. _Eight days. That's…that's quite a while_. "Possessed?" he asked shortly.

"Not exactly," Sam said. "Well, sure, there was a demonic presence in your body, but it wasn't a possession in the conventional meaning of the term." His head dipped slightly, his long bangs hiding his eyes, and Dean was suddenly overcome with a weird desire to reach out and brush them aside. "It took me sometime to figure it out. I mean, obviously you were showing no signs of a normal possession – it seemed like you were just asleep, most of the time – but I tried out a normal exorcism at first anyway."

"It didn't work, though."

"Yeah. Bobby was the one who first suggested it might be a possession, and I told him about the symbol."

_The stupid blasted symbol strikes again_. "And?"

"That was when we decided to take you here." A smile pulled at the corner of Sam's lips. "You're heavier than you look, you know."

Dean grinned at him. "Pure muscle, Sam. Pure muscle."

"Yeah, from head down, apparently." Sam snorted and shook his head. "Anyway, it was then that Bobby recognised the symbol. We read a bit into it, and it turns out that it's something reserve source of power for higher-end demons." He finally met Dean's eyes. "Like the Yellow-Eyed demon."

_Two glowing orbs in the darkness…_ "Wait," Dean said. "Reserve source of power? How?"

"For archaic remains of a parallel netherworld, demons are pretty resourceful," Sam said, shifting in his seat. Dean's lips twitched like he wanted to comment at that, but he let it slide. "The more ways we find to counter them, the more they try to find a way around it. These symbols are powerful seals, locking away parts of their demonic presence, scattered in various random places. Under the right kind of conditions, they can be activated for the resurrection of the demon, in case something happens to it."

"So how come the sons of bitches that we've managed to kill are not able to come back?"

"Like I said, Dean, it'd have to be really powerful demon to manage it. There aren't many with that kind of power." 

Dean let out a breath through pursed lips. "And it was just our bad luck that one of those seals happened to be on that bitch's grave."

"Yeah, I guess." Sam sighed. "It must've entered you when we were digging up the grave. It wasn't a demon, not really, so it didn't have the same effect. You seemed like you were drifting in and out."

"Still took you long enough to figure out a way to get it out."

Sam shrugged. "Neither Bobby or I have ever seen something like this before." He looked at Dean curiously "What was it like? I mean, it wasn't a real possession, or anything, but you seemed…"

The grave, the fight, the gate, the light, Sam in tears, Sam bloodied, Sam a demon, Sam with that insane light in his eyes, Sam with an anger and hate so powerful that – 

"I didn't feel anything." Dean looked away. "It was just like drifting in and out of an insanely deep sleep."

"Oh." The silence stretched between them again, but this time Dean did not feel a desire to break it. Dean didn't know if it had really been the Yellow-Eyed demon, or if the things that he had seen were a reaction to the possession, or a weird prophecy. He found that he didn't _want_ to know, either – what he had seen was just not an option. It was simply _not_ going to happen.

He would see to that.

"We should be back on our way later today, you know," he said finally. "We have Bella to track down."

Sam nodded. "Make sure you get some more rest before that, though."

"Yeah, whatever." Dean leaned back and closed his eyes once again. Sam was changing – he knew that. Turning into something ruthless, pragmatic and hard-hearted, to prepare himself to what seemed like an inevitable destiny that he would have to face alone, but that didn't change the fact that they were _brothers_, and that they would do anything for each other. If Dean had scared himself with the things he was willing to do, the lines he was willing to stretch and cross to save his only remaining family, a fair bit of apprehension rose in him to think – _know_ – that Sam was willing to do the same as well. 

Both of them needed each other, in ways more insane than Dean was prepared to admit, and that was a truth that was both going to take him to hell…

… and drag him back.

_**Finis **_

_**A/N:**_ Not the best of endings, but I'm afraid the rest of the story sucked my limited creative juices dry. Comments and suggestions would be much appreciated.


End file.
